The Google Gboard will now let you turn your selfies into a personalised mini stickers

Because if AI doesn’t emoji-fy your face, what are you even doing with your life?

The Google Gboard may have come pre-programmed with your Android smartphone but chances are that you’ve probably never used it before. That is about to change, though, since Gboard is turning your selfies into mini emojis. Now that Google has announced the arrival of a new feature on the Gboard, you can expect your social circle to make liberal use of these during chats. After all, who would want to miss out on an illustrated emoji pack that transforms your picture into a personalised sticker? The sticker packs are already available on Allo and come absolutely free of cost.

Getting your own Mini — that’s what the stickers are called — is as close as any of us will get to having our own Kimojis. All you gotta do is to snap a selfie and bring that into the Gboard app. The app will then customize your image into a fun, illustrated and emojified version of you under two categories — Bold and Sweet. These Minis are automatically created and designed to match your skin tone, hair colour, hairstyle, eye colour, face shape, facial hair and a lot more.

The stickers were initially introduced by Google as ‘selfie stickers’ in Allo last year. However, the launch of Minis on Gboard indicates that Google is trying to distribute Allo’s features to its other products as the messaging app itself is getting phased out.

Google attributes this feature to a combination of machine learning, neural networks and artist illustrations, and claims that there are more than a quadrillion possible designs for the new stickers. And while quadrillion seems a lot, more styles are coming soon according to the tech titan.